As of 1908, no one could have predicted what was right around the corner for Igor Stravinsky, a 26-year-old protégé of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Saint Petersburg. It had only been six years since Stravinsky had abandoned his law studies and started taking private composition lessons, and pretty much all he had to show for it were two short pieces for orchestra. But those pieces, heavily influenced by his teacher’s singular talent for orchestration, were enough to attract the attention of a dance impresario with a mission to spread Russian ballet to the West: Serge Diaghilev.
For his company’s debut season in Paris in 1909, Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to contribute two orchestrations for a ballet set to Chopin’s music; then the next season, when a more experienced composer fell through, Diaghilev took a gamble and asked Stravinsky to compose the music for The Firebird. With the debut of that fantastical ballet based on Russian folk themes—the very first performance of Stravinsky’s music outside of Russia—he established himself as the ultimate trendsetter in contemporary music.
Stravinsky soon proposed creating another over-the-top score for the Ballets Russes, this one based on prehistoric pagan sacrifice, an idea that would soon become The Rite of Spring. But first, as he later recorded in his autobiography, “I wanted to refresh myself by composing an orchestral piece in which the piano would play the most important part.” The music he conceived brought to mind “a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra.”
When Diaghilev heard the initial sketches, he persuaded Stravinsky to develop it into a ballet, and together they shaped a plot that transpires at a traditional Russian fair, in which dolls magically come to life and get entangled in a tragic love triangle. Petrushka debuted in Paris on 1911, and its intoxicating synthesis of music, sets, costumes, and choreography (with the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky dancing the title role) exemplified everything that made the Ballet Russes a modern sensation. The version of Petrushka heard here features a slightly reduced orchestration that Stravinsky prepared in 1947, which increased the prominence of the piano and had the practical effect of renewing his copyrights and royalties after his immigration to the United States.
The outer scenes of Petrushka transpire in the fairgrounds, while the two central episodes occur in the cells of Petrushka and the Moor, rivals for the affection of the Ballerina—all of them being puppets whom a magician has brought to life. In the final scene, the Moor kills Petrushka, and the ballet ends with the ghost of Petrushka taunting the magician.
A signature sound in the score is the superimposition of two clashing triads, their root notes separated by the pungent interval of an augmented fourth. This ambiguous “Petrushka” chord appears near the beginning of the second tableau: Listen for the rising triads from two clarinets, starting a few measures after the barrage from a military drum. The bitonal sound mirrors the predicament of Petrushka, who exists in two different worlds (human and puppet) and belongs in neither.
Piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, piano, strings
